Wednesday, September 20, 2017

The Perplex of Convex

The discussion comes around every once in a while about wheel diameter to stock thickness and how high a concave or hollow grind will be. Some time ago Bimjo published a web based calculator for this based on Rob Frink's formula. Bimjo's widget seems to have disappeared from the web, but some Wayback pages can be found. Using the same formula I made a new online version.

The idea is that you choose a wheel diameter and some steel thickness and lastly the edge thickness. The calculation is done and you receive the height of the grind. Link is here: http://dcknives.com/public/grind_angle_concave.php

Sunday, September 17, 2017

This is a larger version of the KN20 honesuki sometimes called a garasuki. The blade is generally a little thicker and longer than a typical honesuki. This one is made from 0.130" AEB-L and features through-tang construction with brass, black paper Micarta and fibre spacers, with the main part of the handle being a synthetic material known as Acrylester Renaissance #102 . The blade is 175 mm or just shy of 7" long.

West Systems G-flex is used to all the handle pieces together.

Once the stack is all in place the butt is threaded on to the tang screw and a 3/16" mosaic pin is peened into the remaining hole.

Some work on the slack belt really shows how Acrylester is going to turn out. After 400 grit, I took it over to the bench and hand sanded to 1500 grit, followed by some Meguiar's Plast-X plastic polish.

Saturday, August 5, 2017

My latest little knife, a left handed honesuki (KN20) made from AEB-L and stabilized koa. The bolster is brass, 154CM and black fiber spacer. The construction is through tang meaning the tang is extended all the way through to the butt. The cutting edge is 6" (150 mm). Notice there is no bevel on the right side of the blade?